Posts filed under 'money'
Now I am by no means what you might call a “fashionista”. But, I do seem to buy a lot of clothes, mostly t-shirts, shoes, shorts, and jeans. And I must admit that I have a fairly low level of self control. So, if you offer me a good price on something, I am probably going to be buying way more that that, because I need to get a good deal on shipping. I mean why buy a $9.99 t-shirt, and then spend $8-$10 on shipping?
And now that I have brought up the $9.99 t-shirt, what is up with all the stores selling t-shirts at that price? I saw it the other day when I bought a shirt at ThinkGeek, I mean look at all the shirts for $9.99. But then what did I notice? A lot of other companies are doing the same thing. Ron Jon, Pac Sun (tho only a couple that I could find), and even Jinx. Really, how am I supposed to save any money when they keep throwing these low low prices at me? At this rate, I’ll never make it to PhotoShop World.
January 21st, 2010
Well, maybe. At least in some circumstances. But right now, in one particular situation, I am inclined to say no, it is not. Perhaps you are being affected by the recent set of negotiations between a cable company and a content provider. For me, it is currently the FOX vs TWC (BrightHouse) negotiations.
There are a couple of things that bother me about all of this. First and foremost, is the thought that FOX wants to charge me (through my cable company) to watch their local television station(s). In my case that would be Fox 35 and My65. These are stations that are being broadcast over the air (OTA) for free, solely supported by advertising revenue. Now where I live, I have never had much luck getting stations via an OTA antenna, thus the main reason why I subscribe to a cable system. I don’t see the reasoning for this, other than they feel slighted because the cable company is potentially making a profit off of their programming. Now maybe a compromise for that would be an agreement that the cable company can only charge their cost for retransmitting the OTA content. Or, the cable company gets to provide their own commercial advertising during those broadcast programs that they are paying for.
My other main concern, and this has been a long suffering situation, is that I am paying for a lot of channels that I do not even watch. Sure, I watch SyFy (stupidest name change I can think of), USA, TNT, Bravo, Food Channel, and others. But I don’t watch QVC, WGN, Hallmark, BET, CMT, VH1, MTV and others. There are some that I watch occasionally, but not that often. So I would often feel that I would possibly like to see what an a’la carte system would look like. I realize that the cable company may be getting a price break for the “package deal”, but I see it more like buying a multi-flavor box of instant oatmeal knowing that I will only eat 2 of the 5 flavors. That is 3 flavors that I have to keep around in hopes that I get a visitor that wants one of the, or I have to throw them out. And the latter option is waste, and paying for channels that I don’t watch is also waste. I don’t have a choice, because nobody that I know of offers an a’la carte channel lineup.
Sure, there are new limited alternatives, like Hulu or Boxee. However they do not get all the programming (Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, etc) and Hulu is now talking about a revenue generation system (pay-per-view). I could also wait until they get released on DVD, but that is not a sure thing.
I don’t know if there are really any “good” solutions. But I do believe that if it is available for free, it should be available on my cable/satellite system.
December 27th, 2009
Well, the holidays are just around the corner. *insert sounds of jingle bells* My parents are off on a cruise, and will be back in time for Christmas. My Christmas shopping is almost done, just one more item to order and a couple of things to pick up for the gift exchange at work. It has been amazing how much Christmas shopping I have done for myself this year. Of course part of that problem is because my parents got me an iPhone for Christmas. Yes we got it early, because they were worried that they might be in short supply as we got closer to Christmas. So of course I was buying accessories for the phone as well.
Unfortunately, the economy has hit us fairly hard at work, so there has not been any overtime available this year. And, it would appear that there is little hope of having money in the budget for raises next year. Of course that means that I need to start finding other ways to make that extra cash. If I could find any paying clients for my web design services, that would help. And, if I could find time to plan out some photo shoots that could be used on stock photo sites like iStock, Big Stock, or Dreamstime. And of course there is always the lottery.
Yet, in the midst of all of these other things going on, and concerns for the future, I still have to fight with websites being stupid. I have had a long battle going on with Facebook over an application that does not seem to want to let go of me. I have uninstalled the application from my Facebook profile, but I keep getting these notifications that players of this game have used my account to do something. This has been reported twice to Facebook, and once the application developer was copied on that complaint. Now, I have registered my complaint with Truste, the company that says Facebook has a good privacy policy and that they enforce it. We will see if that has any effect.
December 13th, 2008
Wow. I couldn’t believe it. Monday (January 28th) I prepared my tax return through H&R Block’s online service, and selected the e-file. Tonight I checked my bank account and the refund has already been direct deposited (although still pending). Once it is settled, that is half of my PhotoShop World admission. So look for an update on that either this weekend, or early next week.
February 1st, 2008
Well, today seemed to be the day that various sites sent our their periodic free stuff. MotionLoops, a provider of animated backgrounds and graphics, sent out their weekly free clip.
Also, IconBuffet, a provider of free icons, released 2 new sets of icons. One of which included little ninjas. Which of course leads to the question as old as time (or so I assume):
vs. 
Which one is better? January 23rd, 2008
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